The protest, based on a campaign started by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and organized by the Princeton Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), was designed to raise awareness of animals’ suffering as part of the fashion fur industry. The protest focused on Ugg boots, which are made from sheepskin and are popular among college-age women.
In addition to Uggs, which are openly noted as derived from animals, fur marked as fake may not actually be, PAWS vice president Alex Barnard ’09 explained, adding that clothing imported from China is often unregulated, and recent studies indicate that cat and dog fur may be mislabeled as “faux fur.”
PAWS hopes to address these issues and change people’s perceptions of fashion through the protest.
“We want people to realize that fur, whether it is fake or real, is just ugly, and there’s no reason to wear it at all,” PAWS president Jenny Palmer ’09 said.
Princeton is an ideal place for the protest because of fur’s association with social status, Barnard said. “There is a lot of wealth here,” he explained. “There are people who wear animal products here because they can afford them.”
While PAWS members see demonstrations such as last Friday’s as pivotal to awakening activism on campus, some students see the protests as unnecessarily graphic.
Aly Lopez-Aguiar ’09 noted that while she agrees with PAWS’ mission to decrease the use of fur in fashion, the use of fake blood was “excessive,” she said. “If somebody sees something that graphic, they’re going to be turned off of the issue itself,” she explained.
Palmer, however, defended the use of provocative images.
“There’s always a risk [of offending people],” she said. “Sometimes there’s a lot of apathy; we need to have these shocking images to force people to recognize that the clothes they choose to wear have an impact on animals’ lives.”
Public protests reach a wider audience than the speakers, educational programs and other events that PAWS sponsors, Palmer explained. Protests like the one at Frist aim to alert the public to see the controversy over fur as a “wider issue,” she said.
While such demonstrations are perfectly within PAWS’ right to free speech, the graphic nature of the protest might give a negative impression to prospective students and people trying to get a sense of the University, Haley Thompson ’11 said.
“There are a lot of people [who saw the demonstration] who aren’t students here, and they might find it offensive,” Thompson explained.
For Thompson though, wearing Uggs remains a personal decision, much like being a vegetarian. “You do the same thing when you sit down and eat a hamburger,” Thompson noted. “I don’t feel like it’s all that different, and I’m not a vegetarian.”
Seeing the demonstration did not change her mind, she added. “I’m still going to wear my Uggs.”
There should be limits, however, to personal choice, Palmer said. “We appreciate the right of people to make their own choices up to the point where it affects others,” she said.
Because animals may be crammed into cruel slaughterhouses and gassed, decapitated or electrocuted, however, individuals must be especially conscious of the implications of their clothing decisions, Palmer said.
“People don’t have the right to cause that kind of pain, even if they choose to,” she explained.
Barnard said he hopes, however, that the event caused people to reflect on their fashion choices. “If just a few people are affected by it, it’s a success,” he said. “Just a few people can make a difference.”
Barnard also said that the event took over a month to plan and was delayed by concerns that students might misinterpret the bloody scene as a reference to Virginia Tech and similar incidents.
Last year, PAWS and PETA joined forces in front of Frist to protest killing the killing of animals for food. The demonstration featured students representing packaged human meat in an effort to advocate vegetarianism.
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